Google Announces No Longer Track Users Across Multiple Sites

Google's advertising business is geared to undergo some major privacy-pro changes and announced that it will not build or use alternate tools to track users' web browsing after it phases out cookies from Chrome. The digital ad business will go under sea changes, where many companies rely on tracking individuals to target their ads, measure the ads’ effectiveness and stop fraud.

This news from the Alphabet-owned Google breaks at a time when consumers worldwide are becoming increasingly aware of how ad tracking technologies collect user data to aggressively feed them personalised ads. However, Google has made it clear in its announcement that the change will only be implemented for websites and won’t cover its ad tools and unique identifiers related to mobile apps. Now many are guessing it is an eye wash.

The search giant revealed its plans to move away from individualised cross-site tracking. Citing privacy concerns, Google says it won’t use technologies that track individuals across multiple websites. A report says, the total revenue of Google stood at $56.7 billion out of which $46.19 billion, accounting for 81.47% of the total revenue, was raked in by its advertising segment alone.

In a blog post announcing the same, David Temkin who is a Google Product Manager leading this massive change wrote: “If digital advertising doesn’t evolve to address the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the free and open web.

Keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires all of us to do more to protect privacy - and that means an end to not only third-party cookies, but also any technology used for tracking individual people as they browse the web," Google said in the blog post. Rival advertising tech companies are building tools to identify users across the web anonymously, including Criteo SA and The Trade Desk.